âI know that voice,â he said, âand I curse the day when I first listened to it.â At last the window above the door was unbarred, but no figure could be seen at its dark opening. âSaruman come forth!âįor some time there was no answer. âSaruman, Saruman!â he cried in a loud commanding voice. Gandalf stood before the door of Orthanc and beat on it with his staff. âI wish I could slip off back to the guardroom unnoticed! What did we come for? We are not wanted.â ÂHalf a sticky mile from here to the gate!â muttered Pippin. Merry and Pippin sat on the bottom step, feeling both unimportant and unsafe. The Riders of Rohan sat uneasily upon their horses, on either side of the stair, and looked up darkly at the great tower, fearing what might befall their lord. ÂCome then!â said Gandalf, and with that he climbed the steps, and Théoden went beside him. They will hear and see enough, if there is anything to hear or see.â Let the others await us at the foot of the stairs. Ãomer shall come with me, and see that my aged feet do not falter.â I wish to speak with the enemy who has done me so much wrong. ÂAnd I too will go up,â said the king. âI have been in Orthanc and I know my peril.â This was the only entrance to the tower but many tall windows were cut with deep embrasures in the climbing walls: far up they peered like little eyes in the sheer faces of the horns.Īt the foot of the stairs Gandalf and the king dismounted. Up to the threshold of the door there mounted a flight of twenty-seven broad stairs, hewn by some unknown art of the same black stone. On the eastern side, in the angle of two piers, there was a great door, high above the ground and over it was a shuttered window, opening upon a balcony hedged with iron bars. A few scorings, and small flake-like splinters near the base, were all the marks that it bore of the fury of the Ents. The many faces of the stone had sharp edges as though they had been newly chiselled. It was black, and the rock gleamed as if it were wet.
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